Redefining Redemption
by MCD99
Summary: Sirius Arawn's life was recently shattered into chaos. As he attempts to regain a sense of normalcy, it seems that the world is quickly falling into disarray. He finds himself compelled along the lines of fate, some good, some questionably, none the best. Will he find himself or be lost as his father was? Shakespeare once said that people are born to greatness, but not this one.


**A/N:** So, it's been awhile... several years to be exact- since I've published any update to my profile. Most of you haven't even read my story in however long it has properly been since I updated Twin Crescents of the Shattered Eclipse. Not that I blame any of you for that, but I can safely say that unless I properly feel inspired to go back to it, TCotSE is marked as on permanent hiatus. Ive gotten into different writing projects and have grown as a writer. I'm posting this little tidbit here to test the waters and see if I should dedicate more and energy into this project for your guys' entertainment and joy. With that, I'm going to stop my ramblings, I present the prologue of Redefining Redemption, hope you enjoy! MCD99 signing off.

**Prologue: Royal Blood**

There was never a time in his life that Sirius Arawn wouldn't have a good recollection of the events of his life. Starting from age five he was able to recall the days of being doted and pampered by the servants and staff of the house while his parents were usually busy with political parties of higher standing. An otherwise alien concept that Sirius would not catch onto until he was about ten years of age, when he was forced into dress pants, button-up shirt, waistcoat, and tie simply to parade about, contending with the cooing and babying doled to him by Atlas's elite class.  
By twelve, instead of being sent to a primary combat school, he was trained and mentored by family friends. Many of whom were famed huntsmen on their own accord. Amongst his classes he picked up time and the affinity for violin and piano classes, which he found himself able to enjoy more in life in comparison to the strict formalities and cold hard logics of his household. He was a prodigy, excelling in many of his classes, in piano he was prone to daydreaming, much to the teacher's chagrin. Honestly he preferred how his finger flew across the strings of the violin in tandem with the bow versus the stabbing of the keys that accompanies playing piano. He kept up with it for the sake of bonding with his mother, Maeve, who would take time before and after her parties to play several verses with him when she was able.  
Where he was an absent-minded musician, he was a dedicated duelist. Winning several junior tournaments within the year he had started training, eventually he graduated from each of his basic teachers. Though his mentor for violin, who had undertaken the youth in teaching him strategy, also offered him an in depth look into aura; some which wouldn't be covered in freshman year of most secondary combat schools. As a sort of early graduation present, his teachers and parents all pitched in for the payments to forge Sirius's mechashift weapons. After three long years of toiling and striving, he was approached by General Ironwood to serve the Atlesian Specialist Force. It marked a new chapter to come in Sirius's life.  
Upon voicing his wish to enlist as a Specialist in lieu of becoming a huntsman, his father became furious. For Ursal Arawn wished his son to instead follow in his footsteps as a renowned general. While Sirius's mother was the first to question coming to and the first to want to leave this desolate kingdom, but to her dismay, her husband had become grossly ensnared by the city and its teeming political schemes. Dedicating hours upon hours to not only military operations, but also to parties with reckless abandon to simply show off his medals. But they had a bigger secret; one that, if found out, would spell disaster and chaos for the reputation of the patriarch of the small and prosperous family.  
They were faunus, his parents both 'forced' to take very extreme steps in keeping it secret. His father had commissioned all of them to get their respective faunus traits surgically removed, a painful process that saw the removal of his tail. They went to Atlas, things were starting to look up, everyone was starting to grow accustomed to the snowy peaks of Mantle. But his father had sunk too far into Atlas's anti-faunus outlook; as time grew on, his father's glares and temper rose, eventually coming to a boiling point upon his fifteenth birthday. His father, in a drunken rage, challenged him to a duel, that if he won, he could enlist with the Specialists, and if he lost, he'd go down into the dust mines like "filthy animal" that he reminded his father of.  
Needless to say, both progeny and forebear fought tooth and nail for their own causes, aura clashing alongside blade as each seemed to relent. Eventually, Sirius pulled through, with the tip of the Arawn family blade drawn against his father's throat. His father, he who had finally collapsed to his knees, his face full of utter contempt was spared by his compassionate son. Sirius turned away only to hear his father stand and the rasp of steel drawing from a scabbard. He tried to anticipate then blindly parry from where the desperate lunge would strike. Only to see a knife pierce his guard and his torso. Bones chipped as the blade finally broke through the aura and ruptured his internal organs, his father proceeded to kick him off the blade and knelt down by his son and beat and berate him. That was How Ironwood, who had been summoned by Mauve when the bout had first started, arrived at the scene they saw in the drawing room. It was horrendous, a bloodied teenager curled and still at the foot of his father -who had spent the past several minutes beating the young boy in his vainglorious victory.  
Ironwood stepped in then and there, demanding that his father surrender to arrest so he could be tried for his crimes, hoping to solve the situation diplomatically. His father, simply lunged at the stunned General, who fell to the ground. The elder Arawn's mind having succumbed to the repressed urges of his animalistic heraldry. Ursal lifting his sword above the prone general of Atlas, swinging down to cleave the man's head in two. The weapon was halted by Sirius, who had slowly stood and lurched until being close enough to grab the hilt with just enough time for Ironwood to roll away and towards his gun as Sirius weakly wrestled his father to the ground. Despite his best efforts, his father threw him off, but Ironwood wouldn't stand for his father's injustices. He played the roles of judge, jury, and executioner that night as he leveled his gun to fire upon the deranged man. Sirius was carried out of his home with his mother by his side and his father's blood across his body. He could only hear one sound that could still be made out through the static of his mind, it was the punctuated silence that followed the gunshot that signalled his father's life. It wasn't unlike a bell he reasoned, with each passing moment after maddeningly silent. He'd look back on that night in his later years as the proper night that his life started, marking the end of Sirius's life as a noble, and the start of his life as a huntsman.


End file.
